


Beauty to Create and to Destroy

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Beauty - Freeform, Carthak, Creation, Destruction, F/M, Fall of Empires, Family, History, Love, Pregnancy, References to Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-11 05:53:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15308871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: To Kaddar, Kalasin is the most beautiful woman in Carthak, but beauty has the power to create and to destroy.





	Beauty to Create and to Destroy

Beauty to Create and to Destroy

Kalasin sprawled on the divan beside the open doors that led onto the balcony that hugged the outside of the quarters she shared with Kaddar. As she watched without seeing, the palm fronds in the garden swayed in a breeze soft as summer dreams that lifted the skirts of the too-tight silk dress that clung most unflatteringly to the bulge in her abdomen that didn’t come from overindulging in sticky sweet honey cakes or date pastries. 

The new life swelling inside her made her ankles and joints ache from carrying around a body whose bloat could only be reduced through frequent trips to the chamber pot and salty tears such as the ones streaking down her cheeks in trickles of ruined black kohl that had once rimmed her eyes. Even when she had sailed away from Tortall forever, she hadn’t sobbed so much as she did now with every nerve inside her hurting and her womb kicked by the baby who seemed to be rehearsing a grand entrance into the world. 

“Kalasin?” Kaddar’s forehead crinkled with concern as he stepped out of the tiled bathing room where he had been washing off the elaborate regalia he wore to state functions to emphasize his absolute authority over every inch of Carthak. “What’s wrong?” 

“It’s the baby.” Kalasin folded her hands over the roundness of her womb, unable to describe more precisely what was wrong when everything inside her screamed for comfort. 

“The baby?” Kaddar had surged across the room before Kalasin could blink, tricking her eyes into believing that he had disappeared and reappeared in a heartbeat. Threading her fingers between his, he demanded breathlessly, “Should I have a slave fetch Zaimid? He’ll be here at once if I’ve need of him.” 

Zaimid was one of Kaddar’s closest friends, a confidant from his university days who was the only healer Kaddar trusted with her life and that of their unborn child. Everyone else he feared might poison her or the developing baby inside her. 

“That won’t be necessary.” Kalasin assured her husband with a crooked smile that apologized for worrying him. “It’s just the baby makes me weepy, but Mama says that’s the sign of a healthy child growing in the womb.” 

“Why are you weepy, my love?” Kaddar wiped the tears from her face with ginger fingers and Kalasin sensed his to dry them forever. 

“I feel ugly.” Kalasin’s cheeks flamed at her own shallowness yet so much of her pride came from the knowledge that she was beautiful. “None of my clothes fit right, Kaddar.” 

“That’s because you’ve been too cursed stubborn about not wasting money, as you put it, on the frivolities of special mother’s clothes.” Kaddar’s smirk was smug but somehow affectionate. “I’ll accept no more argument on the subject from you, my dear. I’ll command the merchants of Thak City to appear before you tomorrow with arrays of the finest mother’s clothes, and I insist that you buy every one that makes you feel as lovely as you look to me. I won’t have you feeling for a moment that you’re anything less than the most beautiful woman in Carthak.” 

“Am I the most beautiful woman in Carthak?” Kalasin arched an eyebrow to conceal how charmed she was by Kaddar’s compliment. Papa, she remembered with the warmth that always lit her like a lantern when she reminisced on her family or her childhood, had always called Mama the most beautiful woman in the world. Mama would always laugh and brush off the praise with a flippant comment about Papa being the worst flatterer in the world, but there would be a shine about her when she did as if she became more beautiful just because Papa saw her as lovely. Beauty, Kalasin thought, craved someone to notice and admire it, or else it wasn’t beauty, or at least it wasn’t beauty with a purpose, and neither Kalasin nor her mother ever wanted to be without a purpose. “That’s a feeble compliment, darling.” 

“Only your arrogance could rival your beauty.” Kaddar cupped her chin and coaxed her mouth to his. He kissed her with a passion that would have assured her of her beauty even if he hadn’t continued, voice rough as sand with thirst for her, “You might be the most beautiful woman in Carthaki history. Does that appease your unquenchable ego?” 

“Might be?” Kalasin pulled away from his kiss to glare at him. “Those are wiggle words that rob your praise of any value.” 

“Queen Clea who ruled over Carthak before it was conquered by the Old Ones could challenge you for beauty.” Kaddar chuckled as he drew her to him, tucking her head against his chest, where the drumbeat of his heart excited the pulse pounding in her veins, and rained kisses down her raven hair. As she inhaled the rich scents of the soaps and oils that wafted from his dark skin after his bath, she relaxed against him as he murmured into the hair covering the shell of her ear, “Queen Clea was so beautiful that she took two fearsome generals of the Old Ones as lovers, and when those two generals warred over who should rule their empire, she hitched herself to the wrong stallion. After she married the wrong general, the one she scorned rampaged through Carthak. As he laid waste to Thak City, the general who couldn’t save her was slain in battle, and when news reached her, she took her life by taunting a cobra into biting her. Since then, we Carthaki have feared beauty as much as we’ve loved and desired it, because beauty can destroy as much as it can create.” 

“That’s why you fear me as much as you desire and love me.” Kalasin stroked her husband’s silk nightshirt, thinking how even that thin fabric was too much between their flesh and longing to remove it so they might come together fully. 

“I don’t fear you.” Kaddar nipped at her earlobe sharply enough to force a gasp from her. More tenderly, he nipped her ear a second time and then finally kissed her. “I do, however, love and desire you very much, my dear.”


End file.
